


The Last Gasp

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Andromeda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-19
Updated: 2008-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Bethos</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Last Gasp

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Bethos

 

 

Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Productions as do all of the characters who appear here or are mentioned; they are not mine, and references events from the finale of the 1st season, "The Widening Gyre." 

In the heat of the moment and the surging adrenaline rush of combat there was scant room for contemplating one's feelings; despite his own knowledge of the weak normal human need for indulging in such things. 

Glancing back over his shoulder, his concentration partially on the oncoming surge of Magog who had only scant hours ago infiltrated the ship, Tyr realized that he actually had become fond of the brilliant but equally irritating human, Seamus Harper.

Harper for his part had paused frozen half way up and half way down from one of the ladders that would bring them to the deck below where they would be within a short dash down a corridor and to the Command Deck. 

Harper, for his part, once he had gotten over the shock of seeing his beloved Andromeda overrun by Magog, had responded quickly enough to the danger, until now. As horrible as his present circumstances were, and they were horrible; in the back of his mind 

Harper's thoughts swirled around in his mind like a thick fog, and he was seeing another place, another time, were the Magog attacked, killed, and ravaged through the streets of a small human colony on Old Earth. Somehow, the memory of that trauma had managed to block out the reality of the present. He froze, knowing that he had should move, that he had to move, if wanted to stay alive, to find a way out of this mess, but he simply could not suit his will into action.

If fear was contagious Tyr could have sworn that he could actually smell Harper's fear coming off of him in waves, like a heat mirage on a desert planet in the midst of high summer.

At any other time, in similar circumstances Tyr, as born and bred Nietzsche would have been extremely contemptuous of that fear, after all this time, he still was, but he told himself, bring the human back into motion had less to do with the expediency of saving his own hide, and more to do with actually saving Harper's life.

Rapidly turning on his heel, Tyr let loose with a wide-angle discharge of laser fire from his weapon, momentarily scattering the attackers just long enough to clear a path and with a few rapid-fire strides crossed the space to reach Harper and grasped the young man around his collar. "Do you want to live?" Tyr asked in a hoarse, deep bass rumble, not unkindly, "or do you want to die?"

Harper glanced up, a shudder rocking his body, his grasp on the hilt of his own weapon, white-knuckled. Tyr saw perhaps more than he wished to in that one exchange of glances, but what he did see was an answer to his question. Harper was a survivor, and pretty scrappy for his size and for a mere human; if they could manage to take advantage of the present lull, they might just make it yet.

"Yeah," Harper said aloud as he managed to disentangle himself from his awkward position on the ladder and lowered himself to a standing position on the floor of the next deck. "How much farther?" he added.

"Not much farther, give or take about two, three hundred yards." Tyr looked, taking in both their surroundings and the situation in one quick apprising look.

In the background they both could hear the tell-tale clomp of metal-heeled boots and the shrill whine of the Andromeda Ascendant's emergency klaxon on a automated repeating loop cycle. "Any word from the others," Harper asked after a moment of awkward silence.

"None, we lost inter-ship communication about an hour ago," replied Tyr.

"I guess that means, we're on our own," Harper quietly replied.

"Suits me just fine," rumbled Tyr and with that turned on his heel and with a glance around at his surroundings and a shrug that seemed to both resolve and a sloughing off of the memories of his past Magog encounters, Harper followed a short while later, only having to run a little to catch up with much taller man's longer strides. 

"Tyr," Harper said after a while of fighting their way past, the whir of the ship's engines, the din of the emergency klaxon at last having subsumed into a dull roar, and the whine of criss-crossing laser fire ringing in his ears, "Promise me one thing," Harper continued his breath burning in his lungs, and an a tremulous wry grin twisting his mouth.

Tyr glanced over at him as he slung his laser rifle over his left shoulder and turned his attention to Harper. "Yes?" he asked.

"That if we lose this fight and we end up getting captured by the Magog," Harper took a deep breath before he added the last part of his request that he had been balancing on a knife's edge but then figuring what the hell, and then came to the decision to blurt it out. "Promise that you will kill me yourself before the Magog's take me alive."

"That, Harper, is a defeatist way of thinking," Tyr began and then altered his tone a bit before adding, "I promise."

"You do realize that I am going to hold you to that?" Harper asked with a wry grin and a shade of that familiar devil-may-care attitude back in his step. 

"That's the spirit," Tyr said and they took up the fight again.

Several hours later, but it felt much longer than that, Tyr and Harper, had come across what was left of the ship's avatar, Rommie, pinned to the bulkhead of a cross-corridor, bodies of Magog's piled around her. Harper found that he did not have time or even the energy to feel sad; that would come later, if there was a later. ***

Trapped in an empty room with no way out except through the door through which they had entered only a short while ago, except they would literally have to crawl up and over a horde of Magog opponents, was a daunting prospect to say the least.

The charge on his laser rifle had long since run out of juice forcing Tyr to fight his attackers off using his bare hands. Funny, but in the back of his mind, with the threat of imminent death surging all around him, Tyr could not remember feeling so very much alive. 

Barring his teeth in a feral grin, looked over at where Harper also fought for his life against overwhelming odds; at one point only the top of his tousled blondish brown hair could be seen, bobbing in and out of view like a cork swept along by an ocean's tidal waves. Tyr locked his dark eyed gaze with Harper's blue eyes and shouted "Where there is life, there is hope!"

 


End file.
